Baylor Bears Second Half Performance Resembled Championship Football
Even with a 21-7 halftime lead over the Texas State Bobcats, the Baylor Bears locker room was not a happy place to be Saturday afternoon.
When coach Dave Aranda walked into the room, he was surprised at the atmosphere his team had created.
"At halftime, I felt like there was nervous energy with coaches and with some of the players," Aranda said. "I was hearing F-bombs in the locker room and generally, that's not us."
The Bears jumped out to an early 14-0 lead before the Bobcats controlled most of the second quarter, with one drive ending after being stopped on 4th down at the Baylor 4-yard line and the next one resulting in a touchdown which cut the lead in half.
The Bobcats were picking the Bears apart on the outside, with quarterback Layne Hutchins going 17-21 for 125 yards and a touchdown and Ashtyn Hawkins catching 9 of those passes for 73 yards.
While the Bears re-established the two-touchdown lead just before the half with a mesmerizing Blake Shapen bootleg 35-yard touchdown run on a 4th and 2 play, the home team was still disappointed in their first-half performance.
"Going into halftime, we knew we had a lot of things to fix, especially in the back end," safety Al Walcott said. "We knew we had to dial in and fix those things, and we did."
Hawkins still got his touches in the second half but was totally neutralized. The Bears realized he was Texas State's only weapon and gave him more attention in the second half, so while he got 7 more catches, he only gained 35 more yards.
Most importantly, the Bears kept the Bobcats off the scoreboard and outscored them 21-0 in the second half. Baylor stuffed the running game in the third and fourth quarters and recorded their only two sacks of the game.
The offense knew they needed to kick it into gear in the second half as well, even after Shapen's touchdown run.
"I think we started offensively a little slower than we would have liked," wide receiver Gavin Holmes said. "The big message for us going into the second half was to play fast and continue to play our game of football."
Speaking of fast, no one was faster than freshman running back Richard Reese, who blew past everybody for a 52-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter that put the game away for good.
The Bears reverted back to the complementary football that won them the Big 12 championship in 2021. In the second half, they controlled the trenches.
They plugged the run and finally got a pass rush, they ran the ball as effectively as they have all year, and they saw the game out with old-school, smash-mouth football.
Championship football.
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